Mentored Youth Frustration

[Flashback]

I'm posting this to see if anyone else saw this happening today. First, I love the Mentored Youth day overall. I was able to my kids out on the Breeches today and they had a blast. It was a beautiful day and they both got into a good amount of fish. What drove me nuts is the first run we drove up to was being fished by 3 adults. Ages in the range of 25-65. They took up the whole run. I asked them if they knew it was fishing just for youth today and they told me to read the book, it's one adult per youth and they weren't going to keep any fish. There were no youth in sight and when I asked about it they said they knew the kids downstream. I went back and read the book and it does say that adults can fish but there must be a child and no keeping fish. For me, it's more ethics than anything else but I'm wondering if anyone noticed this? I would suggest allowing adults to actively mentor the youth but not be able to fish on their own or at the very least have verbiage that mandates actively fishing together. Maybe I'm the only one frustrated by it. I thought I'd share to see if this a larger issues across the state.

 

[rrt]

I drove around a little this morning and did not see any of this type of behavior. However, I do agree that adults should not be allowed to fish on the youth day but rather ought to mentor the kids exclusively.

 

[jifigz]

I took my girlfriend's 5 year old son out to a stream today and we saw hardly anyone fishing. We went to West Licking Creek as it is close to their house and we got out around noon. A nice riffle leading into a pool had about 20 rainbow trout swimming around in it. He had never gone fishing before and I had to help him a lot with the spincast rod and reel. I mainly casted it for him and helped him hook a fish and then let him fight it in..I think he caught 6. We cooked out and had a picnic and it was a beautiful day. The best part is I was drifting a sucker spawn for him with a split shot and a bobber and it was working well. This was my first time out as a mentored youth day as I don't have kids of my own. I thought it was great. The few people I saw were polite and I didn't see any adults hogging the stream or fishing like that. I loved seeing him light up fighting those stockies.

Not my idea of fishing, but it was cool for him. I was happy I was able to help him catch his first fish.

 

[larkmark]

Adults shouldn't fish. But the rules do say otherwise.Another poorly thought out regulation. You cannot rely on adults to be fair or be sportsmen. They will exploit every situation so rules have to be tailored to address the lowest of the low. I didn't see anything like that today but have on the past. Overall around here we didn't have many out. A few fish caught. I support the youth day. The haphazard stocking means you really have to be able to navigate the fish comm site to figure out what is stocked. On years past all streams were stocked before the season bit apparently now everything is is on some slacker schedule.

 

[lycoflyfisher]

I took a drive this morning around a few popular stocked trout streams, not a ton of people out right at 8, but by 9-930 the popular areas were getting a crowd. I took a young angler out and got them to catch their first few fish, we didn't fish long but a good time was had by all. On our drive back even more people were on the water. From the road I didn't see any glaringly obvious issues with abusing the day by adults. The stocking schedule is easy to find, organized by county and clearly lists the sections of a stream that are stocked and the date. If you couldn't find a stocked stream to fish today, you didn't look very hard.

 

[poopdeck]

When I hear the term mentoring I do not relate it to supervising, coaching or teaching. Mentoring is more leading by example and guidance through personal experience. I have no issues with adults fishing WITH kids on mentored youth day. I'm not so much a fan of freeloaders stretching the rules but I don't let freeloaders ruin my day. Freeloaders suck but they are everywhere.

 

[Dave_W]

I too am a fan of the youth day but since this event was started some years ago we always get some complaints here on the forum about adults fishing.

I was up in Boiling Springs briefly today just to see what was up: fishing pressure was very heavy - looked like a regular opening day with folks lining Children's Lake and out in boats. I can't say I saw a lot of adults fishing by themselves, but they were certainly casting and there seemed to be a lot of very young children fishing. Overall, it was a great day.

 

[Flashback]

Thanks for the responses. I was downstream of Boiling Springs a few miles. Seems like overall people were following the guidelines well with the exception of a few outliers. This group of men just really frustrated me. Most that we saw were helping kids or fishing with their kids. As others have said, this is a great day to get the kids out.

 

[Kevin82]

I took a ride around yesterday from 9-noon, along Fishing Creek (columbia county) I didnt see anyone at all out fishing, kids or adults, kinda dissapointing.
I did fill 3 garbage bags full of litter, and there is plenty more out there.

 

[laurelrun]

I fished with a friend and his two boys. Everyone we were near had as many kids or more kids than adults. People were friendly. The fish were biting. And the kids had fun. I fished too and caught several.

When the bite went cold with the boys drifting worms through a visible pod of fish, I threw on a spinner and cast to fishier spots on the margins of the pool. Quickly hooked up which got the kids excited and scouring their tackle box for other lures.

We took time to talk about good fish handling and releasing. We did some trout ID quizzing since there were brooks and browns in the creek. We worked on techniques for working out snags. We worked on knots.

I feel good about doing all that while also fishing and landing a few stockers so I could show them and teach. I frankly think that’s the point of the mentored youth day.

There are always going to be adults who break the rules. Sometimes that’s a lesson worth teaching, too. See that, son? We don’t do that. (Litter, cursing, whatever). But I will say it’s not worth getting into it with whoever you see being a bad actor.

My nephew and I used to go every year. He is 15 now and taller than me, so I didn’t think he’d fit the part this year. We’ll go when the season opens. But some years back, we had a pool all to ourselves with a dad, grandad, and kid the next spot downstream. We had moved there from a kids only section specifically because my nephew asked why I couldn’t fish with him. As the other group was leaving, they loudly were saying “I thought adults couldn’t fish today”. So i ignored them and then had my nephew look up in the rulebook once we were back to the truck. Everything is a learning opportunity. It doesn’t have to be the start of an argument.

 

[Floggingtrout]

Had two four year old with me and it was great. They caught a bunch and had a great time. Fished a stream that was stocked 6 weeks ago and I was wondering how it would be for the kids with limited attention span. The opposite of what I expected. Crazy willing to bite even with 4 year old casting and hook setting techniques

 

[SMAlbert]

I took my 12 year old son out on Saturday late afternoon in the Lehigh Valley. Unfortunately I did happen see some people abusing the 1 adult to 1 child reg but I'm not sure what the age was the limit was (16?) I cant tell a 15 year old from a 21 year old anymore!!!

Did I fish.... yes, but I was always there when he landed a fish to help, give a suggestion, answer a question he had, or get his line free from a snag. If he fished for 4 hours I probably had my line in the water for about 2 hours (maybe.)

What I found worse was the number of dead fish we saw. One was a beautiful 20+ inch rainbow that was killed.

 

[Baron]

It was well patrolled in Jacobsburg.

 

[bigjohn58]

I chased away 2 adults who were fishing by themselves on Kettle Creek at Leidy. One had his kid about 100 yards away from him. He was acting like it was his opening day. Funny I never saw any of them catch a fish. Both left when I started crossing the Leidy bridge. Sad a few adults can ruin such a great thing.

 

[Clarmy]

No outrageous ruler breakers in Northern Montgomery Cty. Took my 7 yr old grandson to the perky. His first fish was a 26" rainbow. wouldn't fit in my net so I had to use net like a spatula and flip it onto bank. He's ruined now he thinks everything should be that size. We caught three more before he waded in to catch cray fish. I'd say all-in-all people respected the rules here.